Friday, May 19, 2017

Sunday, March 19, 2017

National History Day caused me so much annoyance, joy, pride, anger, and stress. It was a huge project with very strict rules and very many ways to mess up. But I learned a lot and all in all, I had fun(except during the bibliographies ;)). For this project I partnered up with Danielle. We researched John Carlos and Tommie Smith, two African American runners who took a stand for black rights in the 1968 Olympics. This fits the theme taking a stand in history because it was on a huge stage, and it was something that they strongly believed in. This black power salute is caught in a famous photo that many people have seen but they do not know the story behind it.

Overall, I'm extremely proud of our project. It is fun and colorful, and gets the message across very well.But my favorite part of the project was what it was about. It is a topic that not many people know about and I think that's really cool. It also is about a problem that, sadly, still goes on today and needs to be corrected. When we started this project I did want to do a topic that people knew about, but I didn't want to just be repeating the same information that every already knows, so I though this was a great choice.

One thing I found that I thought was very interesting, was they fact that John Carlos said that he let Tommie Smith win the race. Carlos said he did this because he believed Smith would have not gone threw with the salute had Carlos won the race. Smith did deny the claim, but nothing is for certain. Another fact that I thought was cool was what the different parts of the salute were. For example, Smith's gloved hand is raised for black power, and Carlos's hand was raised for black unity. Together it forms an arch of power and unity. I thought the meanings throughout the salute were really interesting and it showed me how much planning went into the salute. In my opinion, the hardest part of this project was the word count. The requirement for all exhibits was your project had to have fewer than 500 words, including titles and subtitles. We had several interesting facts we had gotten in our research that we couldn't put on our board because we didn't have enough words. I can see why they put the word count on though because it makes you get straight to the point. It forces you too only include facts that are relevant to the project. The only exception to this rule was that quotes didn't add on to our word count. That helped A LOT. We used many, many quotes and we finally managed to meet the word count. A second runner up problem was when we spray painted our foam board tri-fold in bubbled up, leaving huge bubbles. These were eventually covered up by photos and text. I learned so much from this project, and even though it made me want to pull my hair out I'm glad we did it. One of the most important things I learned is you cannot stress out about things you can't change. I was so stressed about the bubbles on our board and about the word count, but I couldn't change either of those things. I had to learn to deal with the problem and find a good solution. I have to say, Danielle was super supportive, and it really helped to have her by my side and helping me come up with solutions. I also learned a little bit more about time management, as we did have dead lines for different aspects of our project. Before history day actually happens, I would like to make sure all of our citations are done correctly. The citations are really boring, and I didn't want to do them but I knew I had to. This might have caused me to skim over something and not do it properly. I also think we will have to edit our process paper. I am so, so proud of our project. I'm proud of how it looks and how well informed we are. I could go on and on. But what I'm most proud of is how hard both me and Danielle worked on this project. We went to each others houses multiple times and we didn't have the problem of "One person did all the work!". Our problem was we were too nice and we wasted too much time saying; "Well if you don't want to do it we don't have to," "No it's fine, really." "Are you sure? I don't want to do it if you don't want to,..." and so on. I feel like Danielle would laugh at this because its so true! We worked really well together and we really didn't argue, witch made things run much smoother. I'm confident that I speak for both of us when I say I was extremely proud of everything we did( I already said that but oh well!). Our topic relates to the theme, taking a stand in history, because Tommie Smith and John Carlos both took a huge risk to make their voices heard. They gave up their personal achievements for the greater good, witch I would say counts as taking a stand. African Americans were not treated right back then, and both men showed that through this silent gesture. Last of all, if you are doing history day, or any other big project for that matter, choose your partner wisely. For one thing, you will probably be working on that project for a long time, so you have to get along. A partner also helps tremendously with work, and above all they will support you. Shout out to Danielle, thanks for being an awesome partner! History Day is stressful, annoying, and angering, but really, its totally worth it.

Monday, October 3, 2016

During these past few weeks in GOAL, we have ben learning about the popular literary genius that is William Shakespeare. When I first heard we were doing Shakespeare, I wasn't all that excited. It was just Shakespeare! Now if someone said that to me I would say; "JUST Shakespeare! You can't say JUST Shakespeare!" I really like him now, as you can probably tell. I realized what a big part of history he was. When I had heard of him as a kid I thought I knew what he was. But he was so much better than what I thought!
Something that really made me warm up to Shakespeare was when we did Shakespeare deaths and insults. We got to act out dramatic deaths of characters like Juliette. In Shakespeare insults, we got to smack talk our classmates in Shakespeare style! It was really fun and I made me think Shakespeare wasn't so bad.
We read and watched the play, The Taming of the Shrew. It was a really good play! It was about a daughter named Kate. Kate was spirited and fiery, but in a bad way. She was mean and intolerant. Her younger sister Bianca, on the other hand, was sweet and gentle and obedient, just like women in those times should have ben. She was like the perfect women! As you can imagen, all the men want to marry Bianca. But her father said, no one could marry Bianca, until someone married Kate. No one volunteered. So this guy named Petrucio rolls into town looking for a wife (he just wants money!). Everyone points him towards Kate. He decides to marry her, and, tame her. Once they are wed and at his home, he tames her by starving her, ripping up beautiful caps and gowns made for her, and cutting her off from her family.Finally, in the end, Kate makes a long speech about being obedient to your husband. I think, in the end, she was tamed. But I also think she was too scared not to be tamed. You would be too if your husband abused you! It makes me mad to think Kate likes Petrucio after all he's done to her!
We also when to see Shakespeare's First Folio. Shakespeare First Folio is a collection of all of Shakespeare's plays. It was the first time they were all written down in one place. I think his Folio is important because people can learn a lot from him, and the Folio has all of his plays to learn from. I learned a lot about Shakespeare's times and about what kind of books people read back then.
As you might not know, this year was the 400th aniversery of the death of Shakespeare. It's hard to believe we still study and honor Shakespeare after 400 years. But that's what makes Shakespeare great! He is so memorable that we still know about him today.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

In this 2016-2017 school year, i think we should all have goals. This post will tell you about some of mine. Firstly, academic goals. For all of middle school, my goal has ben to get all A's and maybe a B+. This will not change. I'm so determined to reach this goal because I have a habit of thinking a head a lot. I want to be the best me I can be so I can get into a great college!

I also want to set a behavior goal. I'm not one how really has bad behavior, but it's still important to me. I want to try to volunteer in class more. That's the big thing. I'm too worried about getting something wrong, but I know mistakes are okay. On top of that I want to mantain my good behavior in class.

Last of all, I want to improve. That's what schools about! I really want to improve my science score for ITBS. Last year it went down and I really beat myself up about it. I'm eagor to try to raise it this year! Other than that, I really just want to improve in everything!

All of this is important and I really hope I can meet these goals. They will help me improve over all in school and I will feel good for completing them! Thanks for reading this post!

Thursday, June 2, 2016

For my Westward Expansion Project in GOAL, my partner Hailey and I researched the lives and roles of frontier children. We had to do this project in four days, witch I am very proud about. We put our facts into 5 different groups; Introduction, school, chores, play, family/random facts/ conclusion. Enjoy our presentation!

Friday, May 13, 2016

For my GOAL independent project, I did the topic of nutrition. Nutrition just, somehow interested me. I thought it might be boring, but I still did it. It was a really fun project for me and all the people I presented it to liked it and said it wasn't boring ( score! ). Anyway, I was really proud of the work I put into it ( it involved going to my dads' office for about 1000 hours! ). Okay, so that was an exaggeration. But still, I was their a while. As I previously said, my project wasn't boring, and I;m also very proud of that. I also learned a lot. One thing I learned was nutrition is SO IMPORTANT! You would think people would know that, but NOPE!! Anyway, it is so very important because it gives your body the necessary substances it needs to function properly, among other things. I also learned about different diseases caused by malnutrition. I learned about anorexia, bulimia, obesity, and malnutrition. I really liked my project and I wouldn't change it at all. Maybe I would add more pictures but other than that, nothing was wrong. My project is up above this so feel free to look at it. I don't have my script on here, so I apologize. You'll understand when you watch it. So.......
ENJOY!!!!!!! :)

Thursday, February 25, 2016

For this project we were supposed to come up with a problem and invent a tool, gadget, or website to fix our problem. My problem was wasting water in the shower. My solution was Hot Temp, a shower head that would stay at the same temperature as when you turned it off, so you could turn the water off while doing things like shampooing and not waste water.

Over all I think my project was very successful. I knew what I was doing and I think I described everything very well. One thing that was challenging was just coming up with an idea. I had some many that all needed an upgrade. I also had to give up a lot of my spare time at home to get this how I wanted. For example, I printed my subtitles off of google docs in the largest size, and then cut them all out one by one. That took me a while!

If I could change my invention, I wouldn't change it at all! I think I had a very important problem and a good solution.

I would say if you wanted to invent something yourself, be confident and passionate about it. Also, pay attention to the small things and take time to make it nice and neat.